Lancelot

Told from the perspective of a man who is in an insane asylum, the novel is basically a monologue of a man who is remembering to his priest/doctor friend the reason that he’s there—he was burned when he blew up his wife, her lover and some of their friends by flooding their house (an old New Orleans mansion) with gas. The man (Lancelot, after both the knight and Lancelot Andrewes) is Protestant; his friend is Catholic. He sees the world in three stages: original innocence, fallenness, and then a recovered innocence that comes when people experience the worst evil and live in spite of it.

When married to his wife, he was an alcoholic who did not experience things until he discovered his wife’s infidelity and came alive in proving it and then punishing it. While in the asylum, he lived next door to a social worker who had been gang raped and was entirely unresponsive. He treated her so tenderly that she came back to herself, and he wants her to join him in his attempt to start over—to move away from society, which had gone so far awry, and to move to Virginia (as he tells us—the cite of the first Revolution [from Britain], the second [unsuccessful] revolution [of the South from the North], and will be the cite of the third revolution—the one that he would spearhead). Lest his siding with the South be interpreted as racist, let me note hear that he was a liberal New Orleans lawyer who primarily took cases that defended blacks.

Through his monologue and the way that he sees into his friend’s soul, we see that he gradually calls his friend back to himself (the implication is that he is a failed priest/doctor, and, by the end, he is returning to his calling). In the end, we see two ways of going about with the third revolution and healing the great evil that exists—the way of the Catholic priest (who will move to a little parish in Alabama), which doesn't promise to change anything and, like the friend, is battered and worn, and the way of Lancelot himself, which is to go to the hills and start over.

Especially because the book is in this monologue (I think that the priest/doctor has a total of four or five words on that last page of the book), you wouldn't think it would be intriguing in the way that it is. You see as the book progresses, Lancelot coming more and more back to himself and his mind becoming clearer; you also see him embracing action over his lethargic stupor. All this to say, the novel is well written and intriguing and thoughtful.